História e Verdade(s), vol. 23

LUÍS QUINTAIS
The theatre of destruction and truth and Portuguese psychiatry at the turn to the nineteenth century.

Supporting his argument on the idea of "finitude" as spectacle (Foucault) and "shipwreck" (Blumenberg), the author proposes to show the theatrical configuration of the clinic and forensic psychiatry in the transition of the Portuguese nineteenth century.
This is done with particular reference to the writings of the psychiatrist Júlio de Matos.
It will be stated that this theatrical configuration was grounded on a tension between the detaching or aesthetical goals of the clinic and the empathically or ethical implications of its practice. Implications, which are obvious when we face the forensic translation of those practices emerging then in the Portuguese context.